The present invention relates generally to the field of multimedia and, more particularly, to a technique for organizing data information in a network having a plurality of network stations.
There are a large number of organizations that presently have substantial amounts of audio, video, and image content in analog form. Many of these organizations are currently moving toward putting such multimedia content into digital form in order to save costs in the areas of data storage and retrieval. That is, similar to other types of data, multimedia content can be easily stored on and retrieved from relatively inexpensive digital storage devices.
The migration of multimedia content from analog form to digital form also provides an organization with the ability to store, search, browse, and retrieve digitized multimedia content from distributed sites. That is, an organization having a number of distributed offices can store, search, browse, and retrieve digitized multimedia content from a centralized storage facility over a proprietary intranet computer network such as, for example, a local area network (LAN), or a public internet computer network such as, for example, the world wide web.
Furthermore, the multimedia content itself may be distributed. That is, an organization that is global in nature may have a number of distributed permanent archival storage locations where digitized multimedia content is permanently stored, or a number of distributed temporary storage locations where digitized multimedia content that is associated with work in progress is temporarily stored. Similar to above, such an organization could also store, search, browse, and retrieve digitized multimedia content from the distributed storage locations over a proprietary intranet computer network or a public internet computer network.
Additionally, an organization may want other entities located outside of the organization to be able to search, browse, and retrieve digitized multimedia content stored and maintained within the organization. For example, an organization may want to sell multimedia content to an outside entity, which may then use the purchased multimedia content for some purpose such as, for example, a news broadcast. Similar to above, the outside entity could search, browse, and retrieve digitized multimedia content from a storage facility within the organization over a proprietary intranet computer network or a public internet computer network.
However, despite the above-described benefits associated with digitized multimedia content, organizations presently have little or no means of searching within multimedia content, organizing information about multimedia content, and delivering multimedia content in a ubiquitous manner. That is, there are presently little or no means for searching inside streams of multimedia content (e.g., audio/video streams), adding meta-information to multimedia content (i.e., annotating multimedia content) for purposes of indexing within multimedia content, and providing universal access to indexed multimedia content over a variety of connection speeds and on a variety of client platforms. Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide a technique for organizing distributed multimedia content and for searching, browsing, and retrieving such organized distributed multimedia content in an efficient and cost-effective manner so as to overcome the above-described shortcomings of the prior art.
The primary object of the present invention is to provide a technique for organizing data information in a network having a plurality of network stations.
The above-stated primary object, as well as other objects, features, and advantages, of the present invention.
According to the present invention, a technique for organizing data information in a network having a plurality of network stations is provided. The network may be of any type, may be public or private, and is preferably at least part of an internet or an intranet. The data can be, for example, audio or video data or another type of data. For example, the data could be all or a part of the audio and/or video data within a full-length film.
The technique can be realized by having a first processing device such as, for example, a network server, store a representation of data at an address within a first network station. The representation of data can include analog data such as, for example, an analog representation of an audio sequence, or digital data such as, for example, a digital representation of a video sequence. The address can be virtually any type of indication of the location of the stored representation of data within the first network station. For example, the address could be a universal resource locator (URL) if the network is the Internet. The first network station beneficially includes a first database for storing the representation of data, and the address of the stored representation might advantageously be an URL identifying the location of the representation within the first database of the first network station, and also within the network. Typically, the representation is directly accessible by referring to the address in the first network station although this need not always be the case. It will be recognized that the first processing device could, if desired, be located at the first network station or elsewhere on the network.
A second processing device such as, for example, another network server, and stores the address within a second network station, in association with an identifier of the data. The data identifier might be, for example, an identification number corresponding to the data but could be virtually any type of identifier. The second network station beneficially includes a second database for storing the address in association with the data identifier by, for example, storing both the address and the data identifier in a table of the second database. This will allow the address to be determined based upon a search for the data identifier at the second network station. Here again, it should be recognized that the second processing device could, if desired, be located at the second network station.
A third processing device such as, for example, a third network server, stores the data identifier within a third network station in association with an annotation of the data. The annotation can be, for example, a piece of information, such as a word, phase, speaker or other item relating to the data. The third network station beneficially includes a third database for storing the data identifier in association with the annotation by, for example, storing the data identifier together with, or with reference to, the annotation within the third database. This storage of the data identifier and the annotation allows the data identifier to be determined based upon a search for the annotation in the third network station. It should be again recognized that the third processing device could be located at the third network station.
It is preferable that the three processing devices are different processing devices and the three network stations are different network stations, although this is not mandatory. For example, a single processor located at a single station might store the relevant information within three separate databases residing at the station.
In one aspect of the present invention, a fourth processing device such as, for example, an encoder, receives the data at a fourth network station and processes the data so as to generate the representation. The fourth network station can, if desired, include the fourth processing device. The fourth processing device preferably processes the data by digitally encoding the data. For example, analog audio or video data could be encoded into a digital MPEG representation of the data.
In accordance with other aspects of the present invention, the second processing device preferably creates an object corresponding to the data in the second network station and the data identifier preferably identifies the object. A fifth processing device such as, for example, an annotator, preferably processes the representation so as to generate the annotation. The second processing device then preferably stores the annotation at the second network station in association with the data identifier. The annotation is typically associated with a location within the representation. The location is preferably identified by a location identifier. The second processing device advantageously stores the location identifier within the second network station in association with the annotation. The location identifier is then determinable based upon a search for the data identifier at the second network station. If desired, the third processing device can also store the location identifier within the third network station in association with the annotation. This will allow the location identifier to be determined based upon a search for the annotation at the third network station.
According to still further aspects of the present invention, the second network station includes a database for storing the annotation and the data identifier, and the third processing device indexes the database so as to associate the annotation and the data identifier.
The representation is typically one of a plurality of representations of data, and the first network station preferably includes a database for storing the plurality of representations of data. The annotation is typically one of a plurality of annotations of the data, and the second network station preferably includes a second database for storing each of the annotations in association with the data identifier and a respective location identifier associated with each annotation. Each respective location identifier identifies a respective location within the representation.
In a still further aspect of the present invention, the third network station includes a third database for also storing each of the annotations in association with the data identifier and a respective location identifier associated with each annotation.
In a still further aspect of the present invention, the processing device combines the address identifier and the location identifier to generate a combined identifier for use in accessing the item of interest at the location of interest. The combined identifier is beneficially in an extended URL format.